| #### Chapter 8 |

| #### #### But what are we to understand by this Zeus with the garden into which, we are told, Poros or Wealth entered? And what is the garden? #### We have seen that the Aphrodite of the Myth is the Soul and that Poros, Wealth, is the Reason-Principle of the Universe: we have still to explain Zeus and his garden. #### We cannot take Zeus to be the Soul, which we have agreed is represented by Aphrodite. #### Plato, who must be our guide in this question, speaks in the Phaedrus of this God, Zeus, as the Great Leader- though elsewhere he seems to rank him as one of three- but in the Philebus he speaks more plainly when he says that there is in Zeus not only a royal Soul, but also a royal Intellect. #### As a mighty Intellect and Soul, he must be a principle of Cause; he must be the highest for several reasons but especially because to be King and Leader is to be the chief cause: Zeus then is the Intellectual Principle. Aphrodite, his daughter, issue of him, dwelling with him, will be Soul, her very name Aphrodite [= the habra, delicate] indicating the beauty and gleam and innocence and delicate grace of the Soul. #### And if we take the male gods to represent the Intellectual Powers and the female gods to be their souls- to every Intellectual Principle its companion Soul- we are forced, thus also, to make Aphrodite the Soul of Zeus; and the identification is confirmed by Priests and Theologians who consider Aphrodite and Hera one and the same and call Aphrodite's star the star of Hera. ####  |